At Dublin Criminal Court, Fine Gael TD Jennifer Carroll MacNeill spoke of her ‘cold sense of dread’ and concern for her personal safety upon receiving messages from Gerard Culhane, including nude photos and videos of a man masturbating.

At a meeting of the Irish Women’s Parliamentary Caucus, which is a cross-party forum for Irish women parliamentarians to discuss and campaign on issues primarily affecting women, Senator Fiona O’Loughlin, Fianna Fáil Chair of the caucus, talked about parking their car near a bright light when attending political meetings at night. She also spoke of the fear of intimidation and harassment, including sexual threats, faced by female politicians.

Labor leader Ivana Bacik, another member of the women’s caucus, said she believed female politicians were abused more than their male counterparts and there was “a particularly nasty gender aspect”.

She said: “It’s not just about women in politics, it’s about women being harassed online in a more general setting, in the workplace or at school as well.”

Elsewhere, it has been reported that a senior official at Garda headquarters who helped expose the misclassification of the killings has threatened legal action against the force over its alleged failure to address its claims of sexual harassment and discrimination. Lois West, deputy head of Garda Siochána’s analysis department, has been on sick leave for six months after complaining about the force’s refusal to deal with her complaints. In 2018, West and colleague Laura Galligan told the Oireachtas justice committee they had been “minimized and treated badly” after they exposed failures in how the gardaí recorded homicides.

BCC reporter Aileen Moynagh was interviewed about her ordeal of being subjected to what a judge described as ‘horrible’ online harassment and threats from a young man who didn’t was only 16 when the abuse began.

cyber flashing

Emily Clarkson, an English social media influencer, daughter of personality and columnist Jeremy Clarkson, has reportedly called for tougher online flashing laws. She spoke of being “relentlessly cyberflashed on Insta. I get dick pics all the time”.

She also receives “regular rape threats, death threats”.

On the surface, what binds these six different women together is that they each have a public profile and/or degree of professional power. Michelle Butler, a criminologist at Queen’s University, says that “men’s aggressive sexual behaviors ranging from lewd remarks to sexual assault can be interpreted as stemming from a need for power and control”.

In January, the brutal and senseless murder of Ashling Murphy sparked both an outpouring of public anger and a national debate about male violence against women and how to combat it. In the past five years since the inception of the #metoo movement, toxic masculinity has always been on the list.

A private bill recently introduced by the Labor Party proposes the abolition of state-funded single-sex schools within 15 years. Labor TD Aodhán Ó Ríordáin says the bill tackles “the legacy of single-sex schools” by tackling gender inequality and “toxic masculinity”.

He has spoken in the past about the link between rising levels of domestic violence in Ireland and the “distorted sense of power” he says is fostered in some single-sex male schools.

Last week, Fine Gael Senator Regina O’Doherty, speaking before the Oireachtas Committee on Gender Equality, which is considering recommendations from the Citizens’ Assembly on norms and stereotypes in the education, said that if she had a magic wand, “every school should have both genders and it would be an environment for the empowerment of women.

However, she also said that her daughters in their coeducational school would not pursue the subject of metal and woodworking for Leaving Cert because “the classroom culture and environment” was “toxic to men”.

Education Minister Norma Foley told a committee she would not support the Labor Bill to abolish single-sex state schools, saying that while it was positive that two-thirds of our schools were currently coeducational schools, “it benefits society when we all have possible advantage of the choice available in terms of parental choice in choosing the educational path of students”.

People Before Profit TD Brid Smith accused the minister of failing to answer a question about the religious ethos influencing the teaching of sex education in some schools. In response to a question from FG spokesperson for equality, Jennifer Carroll MacNeill (mentioned above), about whether “every child will receive a [sex] education without possibility of withdrawal for parents or schools” in accordance with the program, Minister Foley replied that “the program will be followed as established in our schools”.

Further and Further Education Minister Simon Harris told the committee he would defend “until the death a parent’s right to decide the ethos” of the school they choose to attend. send her child. He was less clear about how he could achieve what he identified as the urgent need to provide “unbiased sex education from primary school age” while undecided about whether legislation was needed to compel all schools to provide this sex education. And frankly, therein lies the crux of the problem.

Education Act

Currently, under the Education Act (1998), schools can determine what they consider to be appropriate sex education in accordance with the ‘characteristic spirit of the school’. It is known that many religious schools choose not to teach “sensitive subjects” because of their philosophy. So while “age-appropriate, unbiased, fact-based information about sex and consent” may be on Mr Harris’ wish list, as he almost certainly knows, it won’t happen. in schools exercising their right to deviate unless they are legally compelled to comply.

The National Council for Curriculum and Assessment (NCCA) is currently reviewing the curriculum and is expected to produce a draft sex education curriculum for the junior cycle age group which will address issues such as male violence, consent and gender-based violence, which should be welcomed. However, once again, deviation from this program will be permitted based on school ethics.

Orla O’Connor, director of the National Council of Women of Ireland, spoke of the need for “a grassroots program to tackle misogyny and gender-based violence”. Presumably, she means the one that cannot be removed.

At the most basic level, there is a question in Irish schools about how we tackle gender-based violence. In May 2021, Children’s Ombudsman Niall Muldoon told a joint committee of the Oireachtas that the Department of Education “has consistently chosen not to ask questions about sexual bullying. In 2022, the State will again have to report to the UNCRC (United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child) and confirm that no progress has been made on the collection of data on sexual violence in schools . In 2021, the problem of ‘rape culture’ and sexual abuse was found to be widespread in English public and private schools, designated by Scotland Yard as a ‘national problem’.

It prompted feminist writer and human rights activist Natasha Walter to write on Twitter that although she was ashamed of her reaction, after reading some of the accounts of abuse in co-educational schools, she was relieved that she and her daughters went to single-sex high schools.

Obsolete models

In Ireland, educators’ views on the merits of single-sex schools are mixed, with many calling for the abolition of what they see as a harmful old-fashioned form of education, others touting the merits of educating girls in particular separately, and some claiming the key question is not whether a school is single-sex or co-educational, but rather whether a school is good with teachers doing their job and with happy students. In America, research into the different learning styles between the sexes is apparently resulting in more public schools considering single-sex schools. The belief is that by educating them separately, the gender gaps that leave girls behind in math and boys behind in literacy can be reduced, thereby reversing seemingly entrenched gender disparities. This volte-face is also based on the hope that the pervasive problem of the general backwardness of boys compared to their female counterparts can be solved.

Schools are a crucial part of a larger and more complex societal picture. Taking a random example, anyone who raised teenagers will know the misogynistic and often violent lyrics of rap songs where women are reduced to harmful archetypes and their value is essentially the sum of their sexuality. I’m not suggesting a Tipper Gore “Irish Mothers Against Rap” censorship campaign, but I think deconstructing these songs for impressionable boys would be helpful. Ditto to seize the nettle of the porn and to fight against its deforming effect on the concept of sexuality, body and relations of the young people. This should be done in a core subject on respect for girls and women, a subject that cannot be excluded by any school.

Drawing a direct line between single-sex schools, misogyny, and toxic masculinity seems overly simplistic. Many European countries with predominantly coeducational schools have not been exempt from the outbreak of toxic masculinity in their schools. France is a good example. How our children are educated about consent, sex and sexual violence, whether the school is single-sex or co-ed, gets to the heart of the matter.

Dismantling the misogyny so deeply embedded in our culture will take a group effort. Government, educators, parents and activists must work together to address the ingrained and endemic misogyny, abuse and harassment that exists both online and in the real world.

The above reports from a week-long report put that beyond doubt.